Salesian Literature

Chapter 10  :  An appeal for the sacrifice of our free will to God

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To St. Charles’ sacrifice I add the great patriarch Abraham’s – the finest example of love’s fortitude and loyalty that you could expect to meet with in a creature.  Truly, he sacrificed the strongest natural ties there are, when he heard God say to him: Leave thy country behind thee, thy kinsfolk, and thy father’s home, and come away into a land I will show thee (Gen. 12:1).  There and then, he promptly set off, without knowing where his journey would take him (Heb. 11:8).  Love of country, the companionship of friends, the joys of home – these did not shake him from his purpose; away he went, fearlessly, obediently, wherever God might lead him.  The self-sacrifice, the detachment! … but there can be no perfect love for God until the affections are uprooted from things that do not last.

 

Yet this was nothing to what he did later on (cf. Gen. 22), when God called him twice by name and, seeing his readiness to answer, told him: Take thy only son, the beloved son Isaac, with thee, to the land of Clear Vision, and there offer him to me in burnt-sacrifice on a mountain which I will show thee.  He set out straightaway, that grand old man, on a three days’ journey with the son he loved so well.  Reaching the foot of the mountain, he left his ass and servants behind; giving Isaac the wood for the sacrifice, he loaded himself with the brazier and the knife.

 

Eventually they reached the destined peak; immediately Abraham built an altar, arranged the wood upon it bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the pile of wood.  Reaching out his right hand, he grasped the knife and raised his arm.  He was about to deal the sacrificial blow, when an angel called to him from heaven: “Abraham, Abraham.”

 

“Here I am,” he answered “at your command.”

“Enough!” the angel cried; “do the lad no hurt, let him alone.  I know now that you fear God; for my sake you were ready to give up your only son.”

 

So Isaac was untied; then Abraham took a ram, which he saw caught by the horns in a thicket, and offered that instead.

 

He who casts his eyes on another man’s wife so as to lust after her, Theotimus, has already committed adultery with her in his heart (cf. Mt. 5:28); and he who bind his son so as to sacrifice him has already made the offering in his heart.  Take Abraham’s inner sacrifice; beyond compare, beyond reckoning, beyond praise!  God alone knows who showed him greater love – Abraham, ready to sacrifice his dearest son; or Isaac, ready to be used as the sacrificial lamb, calmly awaiting the death-blow from his father’s hand.

 

Lord Jesus, shall we delay our sacrifice to you of all we have, our offering to you of all we are?  Shall we keep back any longer the complete gift of our free will, of the one power of our souls that means so much to us?  Shall we refuse to stretch it out on the wood of your cross, to transfix with the thorns and lance that pierced you, to consume it in the fires of your love as an acceptable victim to your all-embracing will?  If only free will would die to self, to burn continuously for you!

 

Free will enjoys its greatest freedom when devoted to God’s service; never more enslaved but when entirely at our command.  It is never more alive as when it dies to self; never so dead, if it lives for self alone.

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